Despite her previous or subsequent existences, Annette Stroyberg, who has died of cancer aged 69, was always known as the sensuous blonde model who replaced Brigitte Bardot as director Roger Vadim's second wife - and whom he tried unsuccessfully to turn into another BB.
Vadim and the Danish-born Stroyberg met during the filming of his first and most famous feature, And God Created Woman (1956), the movie which began Bardotlatry. But when Brigitte began an affair with her young co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vadim moved in with Stroyberg, who gave birth to their daughter Nadine in 1957, on the day after he divorced Bardot. Then Vadim created Stroyberg.
He displayed her loveliness in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1959), his ironic updated version of Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel, although Stroyberg (credited as Annette Vadim) was rather inexpressive as Marianne de Tourvel, the virtuous prey of Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Philipe. She was better in Blood and Roses (1960), loosely adapted from JS Le Fanu's 1871 novella, as an aristocrat turned vampire, who gets to play a lesbian scene with Elsa Martinelli before draining her blood.
Vadim managed to get from Stroyberg a blend of vulnerability and possession, yet, by the time of the film's release, their marriage was at an end: he had moved on to Catherine Deneuve, whom he never married but with whom he had a son; she had gone off to Sacha Distel.
Stroyberg was born on the Danish island of Fyn, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, and grew up during the Nazi occupation. Her father was a doctor, and after his death she and her sister moved to Copenhagen. In her late teens, she went to Paris to become a mannequin for Guy Laroche, who had just opened his couture house, and she later worked for Chanel, among others.
After Vadim thrust fame upon her, she moved to Italy, where, reverting to her maiden name, she made a few minor movies, including one by the often great Roberto Rossellini. Anima Nera (1962) starred Vittorio Gassman as the black soul of the title, a wealthy bourgeois married to Stroyberg. However, when his past catches up with him - he had survived the war by seducing an SS officer - she walks out in disgust.
In a way, Stroyberg did the same with show business. Having lived with Gassman for a couple of years, and had liaisons with Alain Delon, Omar Sharif and Warren Beatty, she married a French Moroccan, enrolled at the Sorbonne and divided her time between Paris and north Africa. When this marriage ended, she married a Greek shipping magnate, Gregory Callimanopulos, and settled in America. After the break-up of that relationship in the early 1990s, she returned to Europe, living in Paris and Copenhagen, where she was part of the circle around Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik. She was also friends with Bardot, whom she visited often in St Tropez.
All of Vadim's wives (Bardot, Stroyberg, Jane Fonda, Catherine Schneider and Marie-Christine Barrault) attended his funeral in 2000. Gassman, in his memoirs, described Stroyberg thus: "She had the reputation of a vamp, but, in reality, she was as fragile as a gazelle with a disarming melancholy expression. Annette was someone incapable of putting down roots, ceaselessly trying to allay her anxiety."
She is survived by her three children, one from each of her marriages.
· Annette Susanne Stroyberg, actor and socialite, born December 7 1936; died December 12 2005